


Winter Sonata

by vanillafireworks



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: 2014 Winter Olympics, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-03-01 07:01:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2764013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillafireworks/pseuds/vanillafireworks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Addie spends her days with her Olympic gold medal tucked in a drawer and her phone pressed to her ear-- phone calls all the way from Toronto are especially hard to hear when the speaker in question talks with a thick Japanese accent. Still, Yuzu helps her forget, and more importantly, remember when it counts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sorry this fic honestly does not make much sense... wrote this when i was totally noob to the fs fandom, so evidently i spew a lot of bullshit. i didn't write this so much as to pander to delusions but to explore what a girl like adelina could feel in a situation like that, how two people like yuzu and adelina could bond, and you know. 
> 
> also, this really doesn't reflect what i feel truly went down during the ladies' event at sochi. i don't think anyone will ever really know, and in any case, it didn't really matter to yuna, so why should we continue to stress over it?

There are always interviews these days, questions of childhood memories and training anecdotes. Still, Addie knows they aren’t curious about her. They are curious about the swindler, the fraud who wears a stolen medal around her neck.

 

(When they put the medal on her, all she could think of was the fabric resting around her neck, and how it smelled a little like Yuna. She had run into the Korean skater only days before and her heart had almost stopped--- but to this day she remembers the hint of strawberry perfume and powder that had wafted into her nose as Yuna rushed past her. This, Addie decided, was the scent of her childhood.)

 

But there will always be those, oh, three, four, five stories Addie will keep to herself. Tales of afternoons spent glued to the television screen as she watched Yuna’s first senior competition, the crisp, chocolate taste of the cake she’d baked when Yuna had debuted with gold at the  Grand Prix Final even with her injuries— before she’d stolen hearts as an Olympic champion, in Addie’s eyes, Korea’s darling had already shone golden.

Stories of how off-season Addie likes to skate on the frozen lake outside her house, where she first learned to dance on blades. Every time she straps her skates on she hears the music to Yuna’s gala exhibitions playing in her head:

_When will my reflection show, who I am inside?_

When Addie looks down on the lake’s icy, translucent surface, she fancies Yuna Kim staring up at her.

v   

 

It’s March 20 when Yuzuru first calls. Addie knows this because it is on this day in 2007 that Yuna made her World Championships debut— as a celebration of sorts, she spends the afternoon skating to Yuna’s gala exhibition for that competition, Mandy Moore’s _Only Hope,_ because when Addie was twelve the lyrics had made her cry, and instead of practicing for Nationals she’d learned this skate with her coach instead.

_There’s a song that’s inside of my heart/ It’s the one that I’ve tried to sing over and over again._

At least she’s on the ice, she tells herself. It isn’t the rink at Saitama, where the rest of the world’s best skaters are . But Addie knows this is the only ice she can will herself to skate on for now- at Worlds they will all be watching her , searching Addie for the seventeen-year-old skater who stood above Yuna Kim on the podium at Sochi.

You’re looking in the wrong place, Addie wants to cry. You will never find her. Not here, not in a small village in St. Petersburg, where the press will only find a girl running around, trying not to let her tears fall onto her skates skates— skates she picked because they were the same brand Yuna had worn at Vancouver.

The phone rings. The vibration thumps through her pocket, coursing through the cold sensation in her legs—it’s Yuzuru. His voice is hoarse in that fresh-from-ice kind of way, and she knows right away that he’s come from practice.

 _Hello,_ he intones, a little hesitantly. Adelina isn’t sure if his voice is thick from his accent, or from the tears she had let fall in front of him, on the shoulder pads of the tuxedo he had worn the night they had first met.

Adelina half-hopes he still carries each drop around with him. If so, at least someone is sharing the load of the golden pendant she still feels around her neck.

“Hi,” she replies. She sucks in her breath, tries to swallow it in between her chattering teeth—she has no idea what to say. Her English has never been good, anyway.

“I- I looked for you,” Yuzu says, carefully. Addie almost laughs. How typical of him to not know, when the whole skating community has pounced at the news of her no-show at Worlds. All he ever knows is training.

“The coaches thought it would be good for me.” _You did so well at Sochi, it must have tired you out,_ they had said _._ My ass, she remembers wanting to reply.

“Rest?”

“To hide.” A beat of awkward silence follows. Addie allows  a half-smile to spread in the corner of her lips. She should have expected this, after all. They had barely spoken at Sochi, anyway— it hadn’t needed any words to sit on the bench outside of the ballroom that night, Addie lying down on Yuzu’s lap as he ran his hands through her hair, the linen of his slacks dampening as  her chest throbbed.

“I need to go,” Yuzu says, finally. “Brian’s calling.” The noise in the background on his end comes into focus- it must be time for him to practice soon.

“Good luck.”

“Thank you.” His tone is growing terse. Addie wonders if the gold medal weighs down on him, too, if today, as he skates at Worlds, he will feel the blue fabric snake around his neck and make it hard for him to breathe— like a beautiful serpent, and a deadly one.

* * *

 


	2. Winter Sonata- ii

Somewhere in between Yuzu’s horrible Winne the Pooh impersonation—worsened by the crackling quality of the long distance call-- and Addie confessing she’s always been scared of manga (“the first and last one I saw was a _hentai_ comic”), they decide they are friends. Rather, Yuzu does.  

“It’s my birthday in a month,” he announces to her. “And because you’re my friend, you’ll send me a gift.”

Addie is seated in her living room, her phone pressed against her ear as she listens to Yuzu. Legs stretched out on the couch, she almost feels her muscles ache. She can’t remember having gone this long without training. It’s been a strange winter for her, after all- days spent doing nothing but watching the trees and going through the motions of existing. Eat. Sleep. Eat. Sleep.

“I can make you a birthday card on Paint,” Addie suggests hopefully. “And e-mail it.”

“I don’t have an e-mail address.” Yuzu’s tone is dismissive.  “Mail me something, Addie.”

“But I don’t know what to give you.”

“Anything,” Yuzu replies. Addie thinks she can hear a grin in his voice. “Gifts are gifts.”

 

Addie holds off sending a package, “to sort through my options,” she explains, even if really, only one idea has come to her. Finally, the night before the seventh, she pulls out a box from one of her drawers.

It’s still surrounded by the crisp, almost rubbery scent of things fresh from the mall. Addie pulls away the paper wrappings, and there it is— the pair of dark purple blade covers, still unused.

The feel of it, tangled between her fingers, is a little strange to Addie. She remembers seeing them, the exact same brand, flash on the screen—Yuna clutching them as she staggered into Vancouver’s Kiss and Cry—recalls how she had begged her mother to have them shipped from Korea. _I can only use them once I become an Olympic champion._

In the past few days she’s debated with herself, reasoned, oh, purple isn’t Yuzu’s color. But gold is, she knows, and Yuna’s too. So Addie writes Yuzu a note to go with the box, tries to explain how once upon a time, she had tried to wear Yuna Kim’s skates. And how today, on his birthday, she knows they will fit him better than they ever did her.

 

* * *

 

Every now and then, Yuzu messages Addie the name of some Japanese TV show and a timeslot, telling her to tune in. He insists it won’t matter if she doesn’t understand. “You’ll help boost our ratings,” he jokes, even if Addie knows all his fangirls will be watching, regardless if she does or doesn’t.

Still, Addie lets herself fall into the routine, and she dutifully watches Yuzu on the screen. When he is on television his eyes shift into crescents—as if to protect his irises from the oncoming glare of the cameras—and he is constantly nodding, smiles pressed into the corners of his chin but not quite in his lips.

And then she will call him, and Yuzu will do his best to explain what he said. What the interviewer asked him and what he answered, fragments of Japanese mixed with attempted translations. And then the translation of the truths and the little lies— “I said I followed my sister to the rink, but really she dragged me there crying”.

One day, Addie hears her name. It’s right after some question she doesn’t understand, where pictures of a bunch of female skaters are shown onscreen. Kostner, Asada, Kim. But Yuzu shakes his head a little, smiles, and starts rambling something, and she thinks she catches the words _Adelina Sotnikova_ somewhere in the haze of Japanese.

“I did,” he replies to her question later that night, a frantic, hesitant _did you mention my name a while ago_? “They asked about female skaters I admired.”

Addie pauses. _I’m not,_ she wants to say,  but it’s only been three months, after all. “Why?”

On Yuzu’s end, the silence turns heavy, like he is weighing his words and somehow the scale is near breaking. “When you skate, you always want. I always feel the wanting. I feel like that all the time.”

 

Addie knows they are both filled with want, more than anyone. But Yuzu wears his gold medal over his gray tuxedo as he goes from one event to another, keeps it on his lock screen as he trains for new competitions, and Addie can barely remember how the carving on the surface of hers looks like.

It is this glaring difference that comes back to Addie, like a ghost, when the articles come the next day. _Yuzuru Hanyu’s unwarranted compliments of Russian teen who stole gold medal_ , or at least that’s how the headlines sound like in her head—the comments she swore she’d never read, saying _of course Yuzu must have been egged on, he would never admire Sotnikova over Mao or Yuna, or Yuna, or Yuna-_

Or at least, that’s how they sound like in her head.

_Of course Yuzu is a much better skater than Sotnikova, why would he ever think highly of her-_

 

 

 

“Retirement.” Yuzu’s voice is thin over the phone, and Addie imagines it pressed in between his lips, pale from the cold. It’s a big word. But even Yuzu knows what it means. Everyone in the figure skating world does, after all.

“I don’t know if that’s even the right word,” Addie replies, tiredly.

“Resting,” he offers, again. Addie wonders if the exchange has become routine to them.

“Hiding,” she replies, again, and Yuzu falls silent.

 Addie hopes he knows the usual questions will only be useless: _What about your parents, your sister?_ She will make them happy in other ways. Not like this, not when she can’t even bring herself to eat the congratulatory cake her mother baked her the minute she arrived home.

 _So you’re just giving up on your dreams?_ ButAddie’s dream has always been to become a skater Yuna would respect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Addie watches an interview of Yuna’s when Yuzu hangs up, the one minutes after the podium ceremony. She’d always watched interviews like these, especially in 2010, when Yuna had finished her record-breaking free skate- loved seeing the flush of victory on Yuna’s face.

She had promised herself then that one day she would wear the medal around her neck, and feel that beautiful warmth spread from her cheeks to her heart to the tips of her skates, because she had finally, finally won, just like Yuna.

Today, there is no warmth in her cheeks. There won’t be, not until spring comes around and the lake will be clear water again, and even then Addie can’t be sure if the glaciers growing in her chest will have thawed.

 _I’m just… satisfied that it’s all over now._ Addie has read the subtitles before Yuna has even finished talking, as always, and now with Yuna’s words she can see her idol’s entire career unfolding before her- it’s over, Addie’s childhood is over, and Yuna is satisfied.

But Yuna finishes with a silver medal, the world’s adoration and respect. At twenty-three, she has a shimmering life before her.

And Addie is seventeen, her gold medal in a drawer she can’t bring herself to open, and she’s afraid she’s already done for.

It won’t be so bad to step away now, Addie tells herself. Yuna has just done it, because she knows there are places to go to besides podiums and rinks. Addie convinces herself  this is why she decided not to fight the decision to skip Worlds—she knows she could have done it after all, could have fought for it the way she had at Sochi, even though she had already known then. This is why she watched the 2014 Worlds from a television set in her house, this is why she enrolled in university instead of training for the next season.

They will be looking for the girl who beat Yuna Kim. But they will never find her—never find anyone greater than the figure skater who first made Addie believe that, as a young girl, her crushed ankles and aching joints and late nights at the rink could turn into something truly beautiful.

They will be looking for the girl who beat Yuna Kim in Adelina Sotnikova, but they will never find her— it is better, then, that Addie is lost forever.

 

* * *

 

Addie is setting by her bedroom window, watching a fragment of sun peek out from beneath the clouds, when her phone rings. The sound jolts her. Yuzu hasn’t called in weeks, and Addie has had trouble deciding if she’s sad, or relieved.

His voice is breathless when she picks up. In the background, Addie can hear the rough skidding of blades- he’s on the ice. “I sent you something.”

“It’s- it’s not my birthday.”

“It’s not a gift,” Yuzu answers. “It’s something you should have always had, anyway.”

It’s their first conversation in what feels like forever. Words don’t come easy to Addie today.

He continues. “I’m sorry- about what people said, after the broadcast.”

Addie only nods mutely.

“But I was still being honest,” Yuzu plows on, his words growing more rushed as they intensify. “You’re a skater I admire, Addie.”

A few days later the package arrives, a yellow box with Winnie the Pooh on the cover. Addie laughs as she pulls it open, and then almost gasps when the flash of purple greets her.

She takes the blade covers out, weighs them in her hands, and they look the same, only a little more worn.

Addie is about to call Yuzu, demand how he would think _giving back a gift_ would count as one at all,  until she sees the edges of both blade covers—meticulously embedded in glittery crusts, is the letter A. Addie has to take them.

 _Be like Yuna,_ the accompanying note reads in messy handwriting, _but whenever you’re ready to- always, always skate like Addie._

Addie takes the box and props it right on her dresser. The next morning, as Addie gets ready to enroll for her first day in university, she almost sees Winnie the Pooh smiling at her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

<<<<<<

Winter is setting in once more- the homes in Addie’s little village are beginning to wear light blue snow caps, and outside, her lake is crystallizing into an icy surface. Still, seated in a café in St. Petersburg, Addie is strangely warm.

It could be because of the coffee, Addie muses. Or the fact that Yuzu is sitting opposite her.

“You have to come watch, Addie,” Yuzu says.  His tone carries the tiniest hint of pleading. “Just take the bus.”

The Grand Prix Finals are in Russia this year, and she’s feeling a little empty at the thought— after all, a few years ago Addie would have been beyond elated to watch Yuna skate on her home ice.

But Yuzu, fresh from his gold medals at Worlds and Cup of China, is sitting across her with tousled hair and an easy grin, and for now, it’s enough.

“I’d have to take two bus trips and a cab,” Addie corrects, teasing, and for a moment Yuzu’s expression darken in disappointment, until Addie bursts into laughter.

They share a look from across the table. It’s a reminder of the silent bond pieced together by endless phone conversations, petty arguments about who pays the larger phone bill, and iMessages sent in between his training- “still can’t get my quad salchow…” with a blurry picture of his latest band-aid-  and her classes: “Wrote a 3000 word English essay. That’s one more Worlds medal over you!”

Addie laughs, and Yuzu laughs, and suddenly everything is okay. Of course she will be coming—it’s almost comical for Yuzu to think otherwise.

“Are you sure you’re just watching?”

Addie snorts at the thought—she has to pinch at her nose to keep her  coffee from spilling onto the table. “Of course. You can’t just waltz into Worlds, in case you’ve forgotten…” a pause, and her eyebrows raise teasingly, “three time gold medallist.” _There’s still that minimum point requirement,_ the one she hasn’t fulfilled after almost two years away from competitions. But it’s winter in her mouth and her tongue is too frozen to speak.

Yuzu blushes, but only briefly. “There’s still the NRW Trophy.”

“The NRW? Are you-“

 

A pause. Addie remembers this competition, this documentary. She’d watched it on her laptop when it had finally been subbed, her dusty Mac perched on the side of the rink: _Another Challenge._

“You could win gold there, if you trained good.” Yuzu’s tone is hesitant.

 _Another Challenge_ had come out in 2012, after Yuna had finally, finally announced that she would be competing at Sochi. Addie can still remember watching the video on YouTube, of Yuna competing at the NRW as a stepping stone to Worlds… Yuna had looked terrified, but Addie had never doubted, even for a second, that her idol would fail.

“I hope so.” Addie bites her lip.

 _As an assured woman with a better performance than in her golden age_ , the subtitles had read, as Yuna received her first place trophy at NRW, _she comes back and becomes more mature._

“Do you think I could?”

Yuzu laughs. “Of course.”

“I’d have to get a plane ticket to Germany.”

“But it doesn’t have to be the NRW.”

Addie pauses at Yuzu’s suggestion, running through the possibilities of trying for a Grand Prix assignment, maybe even Nationals. But she remembers Yuna’s satisfied smile at the NRW awards ceremony, how that smile had made Addie want to train even harder- and decides, now, it’s a smile she wants to wear.

“It has to be,” Addie replies, decisively. Yuzu understands, somehow. Even inside the café, it’s freezing, but he reaches out trembling fingers to clasp Addie’s own. The smile on his face is less tired now, and more of reassuring.

Things like patience, and the strength to muffle out the voices around and inside her telling her she will never be good enough, come in little drops. Like the snowflakes cascading down the windowpane beside them, Addie decides.

But Yuzu is a snowstorm all his own. As long as he is beside her, there will always be lakes for Addie to skate on, even when spring comes around.

And when she does skate—maybe she won’t see Yuna in her reflection in the ice, like she’s always wished. But Addie is sure she will see herself, and Yuzu, a little ways behind her, wearing his black tracksuit and his crinkled smile, arms at the ready in case she falls.


End file.
